South Africa Women’s Day here ♦ End Material Basis of Sexism here ♦
South Africa Women’s Day Meeting
KARIEGA (South Africa), August 9— “This was the best meeting we have had in a while. I am glad I was present,” said comrade Nosipho. We were celebrating Women’s Day in South Africa. Over thirty comrades attended the meeting. A majority were female comrades.
We discussed women’s leadership in the struggle against apartheid and the relevance of their struggle to our own communist struggle. We are ICWP and we fight against all forms of oppression and fight against sexism in our party. This is reflected in our collective practice.
An older female comrade began by saying in Xhosa, “Wa thinta abafazi wathinta imbokodo.” (Touch a woman, you are touching a rock.) “I want to tell the young comrades that woman are the rocks. They are strong even though they want to make us appear weak. We fought against oppression when they wanted to segregate us and make us foreigners in our own land, but we stood up and fought.
“Even now,” she continued, “I want to tell you to fight against capitalism. It is woman that must lead the society.”
Other comrades also emphasised the importance of women’s leadership.
One said, “In my political experience, forward movement always happened when women took leadership.
“Take a look at our party collective here,” he continued. “For the most part we were a men’s club, but today we have women who are leading our work. And we have seen tremendous growth ever since that happened.
“So, we must reject capitalist propaganda and wrong ideas, the so-called traditional ideas that posit a woman should never lead man, let alone a society. That is not communism. That is sexism, and as communists we reject that. Woman can and must lead. And as we recruit the masses for communism, these young communist women will lead the party in the future”.
A communist leader then mentioned her own experience. “I left my marriage because I couldn’t tolerate abuse. And I learnt practical skills that allowed me to survive and feed my children.
“Therefore,” she concluded, “I say to these young comrades here that you should empower yourself with skills and political knowledge of the party so that you can lead and remain independent. So that you can’t be abused by your boyfriends or husbands and so that we can’t be abused by the bosses. We can defeat the system if we become leaders and become courageous, especially as women”.
Many new comrades from other townships pledged to join the party and left their contact numbers. Comrades agreed to meet more often to distribute the Red Flag.
Comrades also agreed to help each other with practical skills such as making beads, knitting, and sewing so that the comrades who are not working can gain practical experience and build solid communist relationships among each other.
Finally, we did an article as the whole collective. We discussed the student uprising in India. Their courage and camaraderie are inspiring to us. Many of our comrades are in high school and college. They were very inspired by what the ICWP comrades are doing in India.
One comrade said, “So-called education is a scam everywhere. These people are just corrupt and the same as here in South Africa”.
Comrade Nozi agreed. “Of course they will never give us education that will free us. They educate us to be ‘intelligent donkeys’ so that they can exploit us for their profit until we die. Really, we must organise for a new society, a communist society where we can be free and not working for someone else”.
We are growing with each meeting, both in terms of our communist political understanding as well as our collective number. We will meet again next month, and we have new members that we plan to recruit.
Forward with Communism, forward!
Communism Will End Material Basis of Sexism
The capitalist wage system subjects all women workers to sexism, including sexual abuse as well as super-exploitation. Communist society will end the material basis of these attacks by ending money, the wage system, and jobs as we know them. Women will not be forced to suffer domestic abuse by her husband because he’s the economic support of the family. Nor will they be the sole support of their household. We’ll collectively share the work and the fruits of our labor. No one will have to stay in an abusive relationship due to economic necessity.
But it will take political struggle to wipe out the sexist practices we inherit from the old order. When the party leads workers to take power, the struggle will intensify to wipe out the remnants of capitalist ideology and practice among the Party and the masses. Like racism, sexism divides the working class. To fight for communism, we must overcome those divisions.
Women have played key roles in revolutionary movements. Fighting against sexism in our party and making the fight against sexism a mass issue in our work will strengthen women’s leadership, the Party, and the masses.
Read more about the material basis of sexism here
Read The Communist Fight against Sexism here